Catching up with Alexandra Dean's fine doc, BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY

First hitting U.S. theaters in November of 2017,  BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY has continued to play to surprising large crowds all across the country -- particularly, I would guess, in areas where senior citizens reign supreme. We remember this gorgeous leading lady of cinema. And although the film is playing currently in a two-week run here in South Florida, TrustMovies suspects that this is already something of  a "return engagement." No matter.

The movie's worth seeing, certainly, and probably, for some people, more than once. Though the famous Ms Lamarr was most noted for her beauty, as you may have heard by now, she did and was a lot of other important things, as well.

As an Austrian Jew with a burgeoning film career in her native region before WWII (Hitler is said to have hated the landmark film in which she starred, Ecstasy), Lamarr had to flee Austria and come to America to continue to make her mark on audiences worldwide. As written and directed by Alexandra Dean, Bombshell is actually a relatively quiet and thoughtful documentary. And though Lamarr's life offered plenty of ammunition for scandal and shock, Ms Dean, shown at left, manages to keep us focused on the woman herself: who she was and what she tried to achieve.

As Lamarr herself admitted, she was best known for her beauty, but she also possessed a unique intelligence  and deep interest in how things worked -- which eventually led her, along with well-known musical composer George Anthiel, to invent a technology known as frequency hopping (now called Spread Spectrum), originally conceived to help the Allied forces during World War II, that has led to the creation of everything from fax machines to cell phones and wireless.

How this came about is but one part of this eye-opening and fascinating documentary/biography, from which Lamarr emerges as a complicated, frequently troubled woman, who proved a fine parent (early on, at least), a much-married movie star, and finally a kind of recluse, living out her last years with little income and even fewer friends -- though at last, during the short time before her death, receiving some genuine acknowledgment and tribute for her invention.

Along the way, we hear from an enormous number of "fans," from Peter Bogdanovich to Mel Brooks, Robert Osborne (who was also a close friend) to German actress Diane Kruger, plus a number of family members, children and grandchildren. What they tell us is both germane and entertaining. (That's one of Lamarr's co-stars, Spencer Tracy, above, left).

By the finale of this 90-minute movie, we've been surprised, amused and moved by this life that was so much richer, fuller and sadder than we could probably have ever imagined.

From Zeitgeist Films, now working in conjunction with Kino Lorber, the movie continues its slow and steady nationwide release. Click here  (then scroll down) to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. Eventually, of course, there will be home video options, as well.

Hi-Def Restoration of THE STRANGE WOMAN: Edgar G. Ulmer directs Hedy Lamarr in 1946 film

The reputation of Edgar G. Ulmer -- the noted B-movie director and sometimes writer who worked consistently from the 1930s (beginning in Germany with People on Sunday) through the early 60s  (The Amazing Transparent Man) and built up a resume of more than 50 films -- seems to keeping growing from year to year. I'm not sure, however, what the release-to-DVD in newly restored high-definition version of his 1946 film, THE STRANGE WOMAN, will do for that reputation. I'm guessing it will neither add nor detract much, keeping the man, his hit-and-miss movies, and his very interesting career pretty much as they already are. But it's good to have the movie back with us in this looks-pretty-terrific version.

Mr. Ulmer -- shown at right from his early days in a sloe-eyed/pretty-boy mode and later (below) with his older/lived-in look -- was a kind of "natural" as a director. He could film fast and smart and come up with movies that "worked."

Some of them -- Detour and The Black Cat -- worked so consistently and so well that they've become genuine classics. Even when the movies were so-so overall, they still worked pretty well. I think it is a rare -- maybe non-existent -- Ulmer film that's unwatchable. (I say that having not nearly seen them all; Ulmer made some 52 movies.)

The Strange Woman, I am guessing,  probably falls right in the middle of his oeuvre, for both time-line and quality.  He was working here -- unusual for him -- with a fairly big-name cast: Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward and Hillary Brooke, among others, with a budget (though probably small by normal Hollywood standards) that was, for Ulmer, large indeed.

The result is a film more typically "Hollywood" than the usual Ulmer: a somewhat heavy-handed melodrama about Jenny (played by Ms Lamarr, below) who goes from being a power-hungry and deceitful little girl into pretty much the same kind of woman. As an adult, she's learned how to perform good deeds -- the kind that help others, sure, but that always at the same time prove a big help to her.

Some have tossed around the term film noir to describe this movie, but it is hardly that. Rather, it's a straight-ahead story of ambition, success, sleazy behavior, and of course--this is Hollywood in the 40s--comeuppance.

The characters include Jenny's drunken father (there's an interesting scene of a whipping that substitutes for incest), the town of Bangor's richest citizen (Gene Lockhart, above, left) and his weak-willed son (Mr. Hayward, above, center), the stalwart foreman of his lumber company (Mr. Sanders, below, right) and his fiancee who doubles as Jenny's best friend (Ms Brooke).

Our gal uses them all, and quite well, too. And as often happens in Ulmer's films, the bad folk have their good points and are at least intelligent while the good ones suffer from a certain lack of willpower and/or moral fiber.

The filmmaker uses a heavier hand here than he often did, and the movie occasionally veers into near-camp. Yet it generally remains enjoyable to watch, and among its several surprises is the chance to see Mr. Sanders in a good guy role (he was most often cast as villain), and to see Ms Brooke again, a popular star of B-movies in the 40s whose career moved easily to television in the 50s.

Lamarr, never a tip-top actress but certainly a beautiful one, acquits herself as well as can be expected, and Lockhart and Hayward as unhappy father and son add some luster to the performance end.

Film Chest Media Group, which has a pretty good record of restoring some lesser-known chestnuts, has done a good job with this one. Most of the footage is crisp and clear and the black-and-white cinematography (by Lucien N. Andriot) comes across quite well.

The Strange Woman (terrible title!), running 99 minutes, hits the street this Tuesday, April 29, for sale, and one hopes rental or maybe streaming soon.